


Mod Cons

by greywash



Series: Spring Break Creative Calisthenics [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Family, Gen, Spring Break Creative Calisthenics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 20:27:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6299173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/pseuds/greywash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“It’s an electric kettle,” Hermione says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mod Cons

**Author's Note:**

> Over spring break, [I am asking for some prompts on Tumblr](http://fizzygins.tumblr.com/post/141318279512/okay-so-i-have-been-having-an-awful-time-with) to help me shake out the writerly cobwebs. [oulfis](http://oulfis.tumblr.com/) requested, "Harry Potter, houses and homes? (I'm just super into fic about domestic spaces these days.) If particular characters are helpful -- Hermione? How muggle or how magical would her home be?"

“What _is_ this?”

Hermione looks up from her book ( _Extradimensional Oscillations in Metamorphogenic Spaces_ —Cartwright never can bring herself to use a single sentence when three or four paragraphs would do, but the theory’s sound enough), cranes her neck towards the kitchen, where Ron is standing over an open box holding up a kettle, bits of polystyrene strewn all around him. Frowning down at the cord, still tidily bundled up with a wire tie.

“It’s an electric kettle.” Hermione clears her throat. “I’d’ve thought you’d be able to recognize them, by now.”

Ron says, “‘Mione.”

“Yes, well.” Hermione sets her quill down, and squares her shoulders. “I asked her for one,” she says. “She wanted to buy us a housewarming gift, and—”

“We haven’t got _wiring_ ,” Ron says. “It took the both of us together a week and a half to enchant that confuter to come on, and I know you’re behind on that paper for the conference in Tel Aviv, and just look at the size of that stack of books, and—”

“Ron,” Hermione says, and Ron stops, chin set, mulish, his dear eyes bright.

“When I invited my parents over to that dreadful flat in Acton Way,” Hermione says.

“Oh, not this again.” Ron sets the kettle down and steps back, half-turning.

“They weren’t five feet through the door,” Hermione persists, “were they, before she—”

“No, they weren’t,” Ron says, brushing crumbs of polystyrene off his jumper, then reaching for the copper kettle, clanging. “Barely got it closed, when your mum—”

“And then when they came all the way up to visit us in Union Street—” Hermione’s voice is rising— “to tell them we’d set a date, and she—”

“Brought a packet of _biscuits_ ,” Ron says, disgusted, under his breath, and then runs the taps; and it comes welling up in her throat, just then: tight, thick. “Which if you ask me—”

“But I’m not asking you,” Hermione says, around the lump rising up from between her collarbones; and Ron looks up: his eyes hard to look at, suddenly. Too sharp. “She’s the length of the country away, in London,” Hermione says, willing him to understand. “She can’t just—floo up to see us, or owl if the trains are running late, and I—I can’t portkey, or apparate—not until after—,” before the dark sea surge in her chest reaches the top of her mouth, only just, and she can’t speak any more.

Just inside their kitchen. Ron’s face is turned; his shoulders slumping, yielding. Contrite.

“Well.” Ron clears his throat, then, muttering, lights the hob.

After a moment, he says, “After the confuter.”

She swallows. “Yeah,” she says.

“Only took us a week and a half,” he says.

Quiet, she says, “Yeah.”

“So we’ve got the worst of the kinks in the process worked out, I reckon,” he says; and then looks back up to her face. “We can probably get it sorted, the two of us,” he says, “before your mum next turns up to make us tea,” and Hermione looks back down at her books.

“Yes,” she says, and then, “Thank you,” very quietly, and Ron comes over to kiss her cheek.


End file.
